May 25, 2007

Plenty of Hills Today.

The campground that we stayed at last night was nice enough and the showers were warm. We had nice soft grass on flat terrain to pitch our tents. There were only two drawbacks. The mosquitos that I mentioned yesterday and the fact that I-91 was about 150 yards away. There was constant heavy traffic that woke me up a few times when an 18 wheeler drifted to far to the right or left and hit the rumble strips which made quite a racket. I usually sleep through almost anything, but not that.

Denny talking with Victor

Today was a very hilly day with a bunch of short steep hills in the beginning and a few long but not really steep climbs when we hit the green mountains. As we were leaving Brattoborough we met Victor from Switzerland who has been cycle touring in NH, ME and VT for the past week and will finish on Saturday. He really liked northern New England. He had ridden a bit on the western coast and would like to ride coast to coast some day.

Can you find the elf in this picture?

The weather was near perfect. It got a bit warm in the early afternoon both Denny and I are not bothered much by the heat. I will say I suffered a bit on a couple of the long climbs as I didn’t get any hills training in before I left. In a couple more days of riding I’ll be fine.

Scenery

We had second breakfast in Bellows Falls, VT. For those of you who didn’t read my log from the 2005 Coast to Coast trip, we make breakfast in camp and then ride 15 to 20 miles and have a full breakfast in a diner or some local eatery. It has become a tradition. When we finish second breakfast I usually ask something like: "Where are we stopping for lunch?". Our timing for lunch was perfect. It was a late lunch at around 2:00 at the heat of the day. When we finished we headed right into the Green Mountains. By then it was overcast and about 5 to 10 degrees cooler, and there was no direct sun. Just as we finished the climb the sun came out again.

We took the normal amount of breaks today, one every 15 miles or so. It was a long day however as it was slow going in the uphill sections. The route up US route 5 didn’t have a lot of traffic. VT route 103 had more traffic but for the most part had debris free wide shoulders. I told Denny that I broke rule number one today and that is not to exceed six and one half hours of saddle time. He said we should stop right there and set up camp on the side of the road. We kept on riding.

Today's GPS Vertical Profile

This is a really nice campground and relatively empty for Friday of Memorial Day Weekend. It is really quiet, there are few mosquitos, it has nice soft thick grass to pitch tents on flat terrain, and nice warm showers with good thick streams of water. I am really bushed tonight so this has the makings of a good nights sleep. I’ll let you know tomorrow how that works out.

Jim

Cycledog (Ride the extra mile!!)

© 2007 - JNS